That Sinking Feeling
by SassyJ
Summary: Reese and Shaw have a new number. Charles Fanning. Finch sets them up as First Mate and Captain on Fanning's motor yacht. But Fanning doesn't need saving. John and Sam just might. And an old number turns up.
1. Going Down For Easter

He wrapped his arm around the base of the small steel-frame pyramid atop the buoy and tried to pull himself up a little more. Two hands were firmly clenched in his belt, holding him up. His fellow survivors were a little less battered.

Reese shuddered, he was freezing, his shoulder was a mess, his right arm virtually useless; Shaw's ankle was sprained and they were floating about clinging to the channel marker buoy and waiting for rescue. And things had got weirder.

Peck was back.

Peck was the only one of their numbers who had guessed about the existence of the machine. Finch had helped him escape with a new identity and enough money to live a very comfortable life. The bright young analyst had done exactly that.

Until now, Reese had thought that Henry Peck was thousands of miles away enjoying life under a new identity. Now their most stubborn and perhaps most brilliant number was working as a deck hand on the now sunken vessel that Reese and Shaw had been employed as First Mate and Captain.

Reese, who knew that the pointy front end was called the bow, and the blunt back end was called the stern, and very little else about boats, had more of a nodding acquaintance with farm machinery. Shaw had actually spent her youth messing about in boats. Shaw was a natural captain.

It had taken them about an hour to realize that the majority of the crew were in on whatever the owner, one Charles Fanning, their number, had in mind. It had taken Reese thirty more seconds to work out that they had one ally, Peck, or Hansen as he was calling himself these days.

"How do you know?" Shaw's tone was belligerent, Reese ignored it.

"A man who writes a seventy-eight page letter to dispute a parking ticket, _on principle_, is unlikely to turn to a life of crime. He's got far too many principles."

Shaw grudgingly acknowledged that this was very likely to be true. When some twenty minutes later, Fanning put a spear through Reese's right shoulder, effectively pinning him to the bulkhead, and the rats deserted the sinking ship, Peck and Shaw were chained together and left to die with Reese.

Despite the pain of her bruised and swollen ankle, Shaw was a lady of infinite resource. She had herself and Peck out of their unpleasant predicament in a few seconds, and then they had hauled Reese off the impaling spear. While Shaw busied herself getting the cabin door open, Peck, or Lewis Hansen was busy wrapping Reese's gaping shoulder entrance and exit wounds as firmly as he could manage with what they had available.

All of which had barely left them with thirty seconds to clear their rapidly sinking vessel.

They were in deep trouble. The water was cold, the current was strong and the shore too far for them to swim through the current, they would get carried out to sea before they could make it to shore.

Reese had faith in Finch. He would rescue them.


	2. Sidelined

Reese woke slowly to a warm, comfortable bed, a heavily bandaged shoulder, his right arm immobilized across his chest, and the sound of low-voiced arguing.

He felt wrung out and utterly drained, the warmth of the covers an invitation to snuggle down and forget his duty. But Fanning the arsehole was still out there and John owed him one. Maybe right between the eyes.

Slowly he opened his own eyes. Even that much movement made the ache in his shoulder increased from a dull throb to something more significant, like a jackhammer. Reese contemplated getting to his feet. A thought that ran through his head in a fleeting manner, but found that his body disagreed most profoundly. He blinked carefully, and slowly that which was blurry came into focus.

Sam Shaw sitting in a high-backed chair, her heavily bandaged ankle resting on a pillow atop a small ottoman, she was dressed in something soft and fluffy, a cream colored robe, which clearly had fleecy pyjamas beneath it, and Reese's startled brain was attempting to work out why she was sitting next to his bed. Opposite Harold Finch in the second high-backed chair. Finch had an open laptop on the table between them, and was typing into it.

"…. I can assure you Miz Shaw, that we can leave this one to Henry and Leon. Henry has surprisingly turned out to be very capable."

"I don't care how _capable_ he is, he's just an untrained civilian." Sam sounded pissed off.

Reese was just trying to interpret the import of this discussion, when he moved. The pain grenade that went off in his shoulder wrung a startled, agonized groan from his lips, and the attention of his two companions was instantly focused on him.

"Mr Reese?" Harold moved from his seat then, "how are you feeling?" He gently stroked a hand over Reese's forehead.

"Like s… Hell, Harold." The waves of pain had receded from tsunami level to mere rollers. Reese unclenched his jaw, but kept his eyes screwed shut.

"I am not surprised." Finch's voice was gentle and soothing, and the hand which stroked his hair back from his forehead was still there. Grounding Reese a little. Because damn that hurt worse than waking up after being shot by Mark's sniper.

There was a number in danger. John Reese did not have the luxury of lying around waiting for his shoulder wound to heal itself.

Finch seemed to anticipate Reese's next move, the comforting hand transferred itself from John's head, to his undamaged shoulder. "John…" Finch's voice was stern, "you have a hole in your shoulder, you lost a lot of blood, and you cannot undo Megan's handiwork. Don't even think of trying to move."

He was going to do it. Reese tensed his muscles and then fell back into the pillows with a groan as his damaged shoulder screamed at him.

He lay there a full minute, eyes screwed closed, heard the soft snort, opened them and glared at Shaw.

"You. Are. An Idiot." She gave him a glare of her own. "What use do you think you will be? Only got one useable arm. Weak from blood loss." She sighed, grumpily. "Then there's the fact that Henry and I held your heavy ass up for two hours, so that you didn't slip into the water and drown. Let me tell you, your ass is really heavy, especially when you passed out."

Reese unclenched his jaw a little. "Henry's an untrained civilian." He reminded her. Shaw shrugged. "Maybe so, but since you two rescued him from a fate worse than death." She frowned, and tilted her head to one side, "Or was it actually death?" She reached over to the bowl of fruit on the table next to her, selected a peach, "anyway, he seems to have acquired some mad skills in the eighteen months since you…"

"Henry's an analyst. And…"

"He's got two functioning arms, and he rescued you, remember."

John tried to regulate his breathing a little. Movement was a really bad idea, but he was still going to try.

He moved.

His first attempt had hurt. This was full on agony. Reese subsided. He hated being sidelined, but the reality was that he wasn't going to be going anywhere.

He slumped back, into the soft, fluffy pillows that Finch had somehow managed to rearrange into the perfect position while John was attempting escape.

He closed his eyes. A hand, Shaw's, patted his. He opened an eye. "What." She frowned.

It was on the tip of Reese's tongue to say it, Shaw was finally warming up, but he had a hole in his shoulder, and discretion was the better part of valour.


End file.
